Carbide 300R with H100 watercooler

It is POSSIBLE! I have done it! No drilling/cutting/modding required.

 

My build is not yet complete, but I will document my progress here for the benefit of others wishing to do the same.

 

Although I believe these forums restrict mentioning other brands, I can still give you specs of what I used.

 

The key to achieving this is two things:

1.Slimline Fans - I obtained some 120x120x12MM fans, which provide plenty good airflow (Not as good as a Push/pull, but it cools my stock clock i7 920).

2.Motherboard choice - The Fans will still be low enough to bump into motherboard heatsinks that are jutting up from the top edge. Careful selection is key.

 

Measurements (margin of error about 0.8MM):

-From top case mesh to bottom of the fan: 38.5 MM

-From motherboard to radiator/fan assembly (Essentially the height allowance of a motherboard heatsink) 23.1MM

 

Consider anything north of the top row of ATX mounting holes (as observed by the one farthest from the I/O shield) to have only 23 MM of clearance (measured from the motherboard).

 

 

Pics to follow, if anybody is interested.

It is POSSIBLE! I have done it! No drilling/cutting/modding required...

(snipped for brevity)

Pics to follow, if anybody is interested.

 

Definitely post the pics!

 

I bought an slimline fan once for a specific application and it was unacceptably noisy - hopefully you went with a different brand or your application doesn't cause the same issue...

Would love to see those pics!

Sorry for the crude picture, but it's the first one I've taken. This whole thing is still very rough, and not put together. The motherboard is an EVGA X58 132-BL-E758.

I'll take more tomorrow.

I'll take more tomorrow.

 

We'll be waiting... ;):

As I said, this is not nearly put together yet, I'm still using some screws I had lying around, I'll have to go pick up some new ones. Here are the shots of the system so far.

First off, nicely done Jonxor! I bought a 300R with the intention of upgrading my old H50 to a H100 later this year, but I didn't realise it wouldn't fit!

 

Can you provide some temps of your computer running at idle and load using these 2 slim profile fans?

 

I've currently got my CPU overclocked to 4.4GHz and my temps are hitting around 75c, but I have a push/pull config on my back-mounted H50, with the fans being controlled by the motherboard using the CPU and CHA1 headers.

 

Again, nicely done, gives me some hope that I will still manage to get my H100 upgrade lol.

I'd be happy to provide all the temps and specs I can, as the build progresses. I've decided to change out the motherboard for one with USB 3.0. It's one of those builds where I'm going to try to make it absolutely perfect, and taking my time. With the case open, idling in Bios with my i7 920, It hit about 40 - 43 C. Work is pulling me into some crazy hours for the past few weeks, and it won't let up for a while (I'm going to be up until about midnight tonight doing a server backup/upgrade/reboot). I don't know when I will be able to post it, but keep an eye on this thread, I'll definitely put the info here when I get it.

Thanks Jonxor, look forward to you completing the build and posting specs and more photos!

 

I know what you mean about taking your time, at work I throw the PCs together in about 15mins but take hours on my own machines lol!

 

Hope the server upgrade went ok! Got to do one myself in about 3 weeks, luckily for me it's more of migrating a 2003R2 x86 physical server over to a VM, then upgrading it to 2008, if it all goes wrong for us (Which shouldn't as we've already done trial runs!), we still have the original physical server to fall back on!

 

All the best!

M_Taylor40

Sorry to keep you all waiting.

Here we are so far:

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/album.php?albumid=201

 

It's far from done, but I think it's going to turn out nicely.

 

P.S. is that album visible to everyone? Let me know if it doesn't work.

Sorry to keep you all waiting.

Here we are so far:

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/album.php?albumid=201

 

It's far from done, but I think it's going to turn out nicely.

 

P.S. is that album visible to everyone? Let me know if it doesn't work.

 

sorry,it says your album is empty

I guess it's awaiting moderation.

Here's some teasers:

Thought I'd share.

 

My Carbide 300R with the H100:

 

I got lucky with choosing the right motherboard (ASRock Z77 Extreme4) that had a low-lying Z77 chipset heatsink. Otherwise that second fan would have probably received some severe cutting with the soldering iron. :sunglasse

 

There's no getting around it; you have to offset the cooler so the fans can fit.

 

http://www.picshelf.com/images/top_of_the_300R_diagram.jpg

I tried a drill first but it kept slipping into adjacent holes, causing total f*#@ing chaos.

 

http://www.picshelf.com/images/trash_bag_for_falling_shavings.jpg

 

After successfully mounting the radiator in the newly made holes...

http://www.picshelf.com/images/H100_fan_cut_diagram.jpg

 

Final:

http://www.picshelf.com/images/300R_case_finished.jpg

Oh, I have improved the build since last post. Now I'm on push/pull :)

 

No Mods, Not even screw holes. Although, for convenience, I might do anyway.

 

Also, that is some top quality modding, there Kridian. My Kudos to you, sir!

Nice System but I would change the direction of the fan in the Back above the I/O to blow air inside the case.

 

Oh yes, I did consider doing that, but before I could do it, It's... well.. sort of "occupied"

 

Sorry for the blurry picture, but That's an ethernet cable going in through the fan mount hole, to the front bay, where a 5-port gigabit switch will be. If all goes well, I'll have holes drilled out for the link light LED's up front, and ethernet patch panel modded into the back of the case.

So, here are the temps, i7-920 idling for about a day.

The screenshot does mention a brand name of the motherboard, but as I understand it, they are not a competitor of Corsair, so it's OK. If a mod finds it isn't, please remove it and/or let me know, I can censor it out.

 

This i7 has been abused so hard in its past life. One ram channel is completely toast (will not enumerate ram in the 3rd or 4th slot), I tested that across 2 motherboards (one brand new), identical behavior. Since the memory controller is built into the CPU, that leads me to believe it's the culprit.

 

I am going a little crazy with this build, and kind of feeling a bit mad-scientist about it. I've successfully mounted (without modding the case) 16 3.5" hard drives, by using a 3-in-2 front-bay mobile rack, and by taking a 4-in-3 front-bay mobile rack and mounting it using the under-side holes. Also, I mounted a drive to the top of that, by screwing it in from underneath. No Zip-ties, no modding, Pics to follow.

Pics of said mods.

 

Ignore that twirly cable in the HD cage, that's just temporary. It's a small fan I tied to the RAID card to keep it cool, until I can arrange to get the 2nd card in there and cool them both. I have a really neat mod that I'm eager to put into action for that.

 

As you can tell from the pics, the top of the 4-bay HDD rack is full of holes, which I successfully mounted a 3.5" HDD to. Not pictured is the 3-in-2 bay up front, that hasn't been installed yet. The 5.25 bay tabs are a bit wider than will fit the bay, so a slight bit of modding may be in order. I'm hoping to go completely non-destructive mods for this case (not counting replaceable parts).

 

I know that twisted pair wiring in the top bay is ugly and disorderly, I'll have a wrangle on it soon enough. Same with the SATA wires coming off the RAID card. I have some heatshrink tubing that will take care of that. The SSD will have to move somewhere else for now. Before I had it mounted using the bottom row of motherboard mounting holes, so that it could be shown off, but I may have to resort to Velcro and putting it right above the power supply on the motherboard tray. I'm also re-considering if I want the GigE switch to actually live in the top front bay, or if I want to just have display LED's up front, but the actual switch to be somewhere down on bottom. Anybody else built a switch into their rig? I heard about some people de-soldering their NIC jack, and soldering the twisted pairs right into the motherboard, but I want to keep flexibility. Soon, those back 3 water-cooling holes are going to have ethernet keystone jacks, and my server will officially have a built-in patch panel. I suppose if anybody knows of a 5.25 bay device that lets you put a slim cd-rom in, while having panel room to work with, let me know, I might want to pick one up.

What were the temperatures before you did the push/pull setup? I just got my 300R so I would like to put a H100 in my system but will not be able to fit a push/pull configuration.

Sorry, I wouldn't really be able to tell you. I never turned it on before making it push/pull. Hurricane Sandy just blasted me, I don't really want to run it on generator power. Once I'm back on the grid, I'll gather some more data (ambient temps, etc). I am also SUPER pumped about the cooling solution I've got for the raid cards which will have to be right next to each other. They require forced air cooling, because of how hot they get, and I've come up with something that I think will cool both of them.

I´ve managed to fit on top of my Carbide 300R and a Asus P8Z77V-LX.

 

Need to remove it in case I need to install more ram, but, as you can see, I´m using Kingston Predator series wich has a big HS.